Children's Decennial

Every ten years educators, parents, social workers, doctors gather in Washington for a check-up on the condition of U. S. children. President Theodore Roosevelt started it by calling the first White House Conference on children in 1909. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover followed suit in 1919 and 1930. Last week Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins rapped a gavel, called to order the fourth decennial White House Conference on Children in a Democracy.

The 400 conferees examined the record of a depression decade, were surprised to find that in the face of Depression child welfare had made many gains:

> The death rate of babies had been reduced 25% (from 68 to 51 per 1,000).

> Tuberculosis deaths were 36% fewer, pneumonia and syphilis were under much better control.*

> Child labor had been sharply reduced.

> Children had many more parks, playgrounds, swimming pools.

But the conference's researchers also had to report:

> The birth rate had dropped and also the child population: the U. S. had 36,000,000 children (under 16), 2,000,000 fewer than in 1930.

> Nearly two-thirds of the nation's children did not have "a decent American standard of living."

> Nearly a fourth (8,000,000) were on public or private relief.

> About 1,000,000 got no schooling.

To the White House conferees, all this called for more child help from the U. S. Government. They plumped for a glittering, 83-point program: Federal aid for schools, libraries, medical care, playgrounds, housing. They were only momentarily discouraged when President Franklin Roosevelt, addressing the conference, declared: "The permanent answer is not mere handouts from the Federal Treasury but has to be solved by improving the economics of the poorer sections. . . ." As the conference closed, Secretary Perkins prophesied: "The program . . . is one which I predict will be worked upon . . . for 30 years to come, when a new generation, pray God, is better born, better educated and better trained than any group of people that has ever walked the earth."

* For a somewhat less optimistic view on venereal disease, see page 52.

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